Who trained these people?
The NASA management who killed the shuttle program without a replacement in sight?
There was a time they would have developed the replacement BEFORE doing away with the one now have in service.
The government had the tooling for the A-10 destroyed years ago. The AF didn’t want the option of ever going back.
$1.5 TRILLION sunk into the F-35 and now it’s “Whoopsie...silly us...we can’t afford it for CAS. Let’s now investigate every alternative except modernizing a next-gen A-10 and have a 5-10 year gap without any CAS capability.”
Everywhere you look you incompetence.
The AF budget has been slashed to the bone. They’re at their lowest manning levels since the inception of the AF in 1947. R&D has been slashed and they’re having trouble keeping the current jets in the air due to manning and budget shortfalls.
People who keep saying that the AF doesn’t want the A-10 are repeating misinformation. Some of the senior leadership flew them. The problem with the A-10 is that it’s a single mission aircraft. It does a limited mission very well. The budget cuts have forced the AF to go to a multi-role aircraft that’s a jack of all trades, but master of none.
The logistical support for the A-10 is very expensive when you consider the cost per plane. You need to have dedicated pilots, maintenance, ranges, bases, parts and munitions. The AF has cut most of the fat and now it’s going for meat.
I also think that there are politics at play here. A lot of the A-10 logistics support comes from States with powerful politicians. Every time the AF threatens to cut the A-10, Congress seems to find a little more money to keep it going.